


Survivor

by honestgrins



Series: Round and Round [3]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, klaroline infinity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 05:17:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10154612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honestgrins/pseuds/honestgrins
Summary: Day 3 - Post-canon: It was weird, to be the last one standing from Mystic Falls; no one expected little Caroline Forbes to outlive them all. She had made friends over the decades, sure, but it wasn't the same as someone who'd known her literally all her life. The closest she had left to a life-long friend was...well, not a friend.





	

She didn't want to draw attention to herself, not with pictures of her face looking exactly the same littered toward the front of the funeral home. As Caroline drew closer to the casket, the pictures drastically changed. Family portraits, selfies at birthday parties, dancing with a man who looked at her like she hung the moon - Elena had aged well through the years and seemed happy, too.

But sixty years after Damon sent her away from Mystic Falls, Elena succumbed to her all-too-human fate.

Somehow, Caroline was the only one left to attend her funeral. Vampire Barbie was the lone survivor, and no one saw it coming. Bonnie died before Elena could live, Jeremy got caught up in hunting until a werewolf tore him apart. Matt's heart gave out, too much stress taking its toll from an early age. Ridding the world of Katherine Pierce wasn't the way Damon dreamed of going, but it was worth the ultimate sacrifice of a life with Elena where he'd have to bury her anyway.

Caroline already had to bury Stefan fifteen years before, and that pain still ached from time to time. It was those days she thought Damon had the right idea of going out in a blaze of glory.

Staring at Elena's face, the embalming fluid filling some of the lines and crags Caroline would never earn, she wondered if that's what it meant to survive: to feel left behind as her loved ones went where she couldn't follow.

A tear fell down her cheek as she bid Elena farewell to an afterlife of Bonnie's creation. She could sense Elena's children watching her, wondering, but Caroline swept out of the room before they could ask the questions she would inevitably compel from their memories.

_Yes, I knew your mother._

_I loved her, she was my friend._

_She's in a better place now, I promise._

It was part of the deal in sending her away. Damon compelled her to never look back; Elena kept her memories, but she didn't reminisce on them or the people she loved. To her, they were ghosts.

To Caroline, they really were.

Once in the car, she called both Lizzie and Josie. Both settled with families of their own, it wasn't easy to explain Grandma looking seventeen, but they made it work over the years. Ric had passed just after their college graduations, as proud as could be. It fell to Caroline to keep their family together, strange as it might be, but they were still family.

"You can come stay with me and Holly, Mom," Lizzie promised through the phone.

"Yeah," Josie added on her end. "We don't want you to feel like you can't include us in this."

It was an old argument as the girls grew up. More than sixty years years old, and they still bickered over joining the adult conversations.

Wiping more tears as they fell, Caroline still managed to smile. "I'm okay," she assured her daughters. "I'm going to go back to the hotel, draw a relaxing bath, and have a good cry. I just wanted to hear your voices. Love you."

"Love you, too," they echoed as she pulled into her hotel's parking lot. By the time Caroline made it to her room, her tears were mostly gone. "Hey," she called, setting her purse on the table.

"Perfect timing, love," Klaus answered from the suite's bathroom. "I just drew you a bath."

Wrapping her arms around his neck, she hugged him tightly. "Thank you."

Klaus rubbed her back gently. "I wanted to make you feel better," he admitted. Five years together was a blip in his lifetime, but he was learning what it meant to care for her, quite literally. "How am I doing?"

She cracked a smile as she remembered him asking a similar question nearly a century earlier. "You're perfect," she sighed, hugging him again.

Releasing her, Klaus helped to remove her jacket. "Was it worth the trip?" he asked, genuinely curious. He wasn't one for sentimentality past a certain point, or only drawn to the emotion in the most inappropriate ways. Stealing love letters from those he killed was an act of attrition, but keeping them was a connection to his lost humanity; taking great pains to attend a funeral where she only knew the deceased, and not for many years, just did not compute for him.

Yet, he made no complaint about her sudden desire to flee their Tuscan villa for Elena's visitation in Boston. He held her hand the whole plane ride over, if only because he didn't know how else to ease her pain.

They planned to make the most of their trip, dropping in on Rebekah and Hope in New York once they've had their fill of Boston. Klaus had offered to meet up with Lizzie and Josie as well, but Caroline had begged off; they were all taking an Alaskan cruise for her birthday in a few months.

"I called the girls from the car," she told him, leaning on his shoulder. "They sounded good."

Klaus hummed in her ear. He could hear her thoughts building, and he was content to wait her out.

Sniffling, Caroline squeezed her eyes shut. "What happens when I need you to bring me to their funerals?"

He kept rubbing her back as she cried, the realization crashing around her as it did through the years. She was a vampire who'd outlived her generation and then some, but she had yet to lose the next - her daughters. Klaus knew he was lucky: Hope was a hybrid in her own right, possibly with more potential for immortality than himself. Kissing her hair, he offered what comfort he could. "Then we'll face those days together," he answered simply. "I will be with you every step of the way."

Caroline Forbes might have been the last one standing, but she felt luckier than ever that she didn't have to do it alone.


End file.
